Formal Letter, Writing tips

The formal letter is a polished, professional, and direct form of correspondence. Choosing the formal letter style is safe in most conditions, as it gives the receiver an opportunity to understand you in the most sincer style.Writing a formal letter involves just the right balance of tone, word usage, clarity and layout.

Elements of formal letters

When we write a formal letter we must take care for:

-Layout of paper (margins)

-Addresses

-Dates

-Salutation

-Body (first, second, last paragraph, the end of letter)

-and Abbreviations

Layout of paper ( Margins )

The layout should be a standard letter size page, with the 1 centimetre below and on the top, and 2 centimetres sideways.

Addresses…

Your address should be written in the top right-hand corner of the letter.

The address of the person you are writing to should be written on the left, starting below your address.

Date…

Different people put the date on different sides of the page. You can write the date on the right or the left sideline after the address you are writing. Most important thing is to write the month as a word, because we can read incorrectly the month or the day. One example is: 1.2.2012, and we don’t know the exact date because we can read that as first of February or second of January.

Salutation or greeting...

If you don’t know the person whom you are writing to, you will use Dear Sir or Madam. If you know the person’s full name, use the title and family name only, for example:          Dear Ms.Zeqiri,

Body of the letter…

-The first paragraph should be approximately two or three lines, and the reason of the letter…

Ex.” As second year student on Communication Sciences we (Me and Argjend ) must create public relations with the audience. This letter is related with our public activity, anti-cancer campaign.”

-The second paragraph should be the core of the letter, with all the information and details the receiver needs.

Ex. “To deal successfully with this campaign from the beginning we must have our planed budget. We found American Embassy here in Skopje as potential sponsor, but we need one good project proposal written in English. I write to you because we need a good translator from Albanian language to English. We don’t want this service for free, but if we win the project competition we will pay for your effort.”

-The third paragraph will describe what the receiver needs to do with this correspondence, and next steps.

Ex. “If you are ready to help us on this campaign it will be good for our communication skills and we will develop our relations with the public. Above all, you will be the first person who says NO to Cancer.”

-The end of letter

If you don’t know the name of the person, you will use “Yours Faithfully”

If you know the person’s full name, use “Yours Sincerely”, followed by four hard spaces (enter) for your signature and your full name.

Ex. “ Yours Sincerely                                             Venhar Ramadani”

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are widely used in letters:

asap – as soon as possible

cc – carbon copy ( when i have to send this email to our professor Luiza, I must send a copy to Argjend to let him know for this email.)

ps- postscript ( when we want to add something after we finished and signed the letter )

Venhar Ramadani 118146- SEEU- Communication Science-II year

vr18146@seeu.edu.mk